It was only random luck that the Torrance vandals didn't use the German symbol to denounce Chick-Fil-A as "Nazis", and if this keeps up, within a week on of them will use it, and when they do the headline writers will be free to write their own captions.
The problem with getting people so fired up over so little is that it attracts a lot of hate-filled idiots who go overboard. This has already been happening. People with no sense and no idea how their antics will be perceived have posted Youtube videos of their actions, and this is only feeding public support for Chick-Fil-A, giving the chain victim status and causing a massive outpouring of sympathetic support.
Yes, some people going too far is a problem with any organized or disorganized protest. You can't possibly control the actions of every individual who shows up to a nationwide protest and often there are agent provocateurs working for the opposition who seek to discredit a movement or provoke violence from the inside (not saying that happened here, just saying it happens). But that doesn't mean you just throw in the towel on the whole idea of protesting and boycotts; you condemn the individuals who crossed the line and say that they don't represent your views.
But in this case both the vandalism and the douche berating the Chick-fil-A employee happened AFTER the mass outpouring of support promoted by Huckabee, Santorum, and Palin for Chick-fil-A's anti-gay line in the sand, so trying to take two isolated incidents, portray them as typical of the movement, and blame them for provoking the overwhelming support for Chick-fil-A is nonsense. People are supporting the company because they were fed a load of BS in right wing news and blogs that this is a First Amendment fight in defense of one man's beliefs and/or because they support the anti-gay rhetoric, policies, and donations of Chick-fil-A.
For a hypothetical example, if you support gay rights, you opposed the views of Anita Bryant, who famously denounced gays while she was the spokesman for the Florida Orange Juice council.
Let me stop you right there. It's not Florida in the late-70s, it's not the black civil rights movement in the South in the 50s and 60s, it's not WWII and the Holocaust, and it's not relevant to the military strategies of von Clausewitz or Sun Tzu or Jomini. It's a peaceful boycott and protest relating to LGBT civil rights in the here and now, and your constant non sequiturs linked to this issue in the most tenuous and ridiculous ways serve no purpose but to derail the discussion (as unfortunately I now have to correct numerous inaccuracies about Dr. King below).
As I've said, I'm frustrated watching people who intend well, but whose actions are entirely self-defeating. If gays are so upset with Chick-Fil-A, why did they go out and double or triple Chick-Fil-A's revenue? Why did they do so much to convince other franchises to adopt whatever political stand Chick-Fil-A had that made Chick-Fil-A so suddenly popular? Why did they make eating at Chick-Fil-A seem like an act of rebellion, hip, cool, patriotic, and American, all at the same time? Chick-Fil-A could've bought this kind of PR if they'd spent a billion dollars. The drama queens are too self-absorbed to see how the controversy is unfolding in everyone else's eyes.
Yes, we can tell that you've been deeply concerned for LGBT rights and that you're only calling them "drama queens" because you care so very much. That's why you've been fighting this so hard every step of the way. Spare me the bs.
You ask all these "why...?" questions as if the intentions of the boycotters and protestors were to deliberately cause a groundswell of support for bigoted and misplaced counter-protesting. They aren't psychic. They probably expected some counter-protests and corporate support but not the huge response that's happened so far. I'm sure it's quite demoralizing to see so much vitriol being directed toward them when all they want is to be given the same rights and respect as everyone else.
And it is mass amounts of vitriol couched in the usual pseudo-civility and misplaced FREEDOM!!! bullshit (while being uncivil and denying actual freedoms at the same time), as opposed to a couple of isolated incidents of people being dicks. The restaurant got the graffiti painted over the next day. The guy who was a dick to the girl at the drive-through window got fired. Both situations were redressed immediately. Has Chick-fil-A reconsidered their policies and donations at all? Why don't you redirect your complaints there since you care so very much, instead of bringing up issues that have been dropped (the mayors denying permits) or resolved (the vandalism and drive-thru incident)?
And that is part of my point. Could you possibly do anything more unproductive to win people to your view than screaming that they're bigots (been called that about two dozen times in this thread), homophobes (I party with gays), haters, oppressors, monsters, racists, throw backs, and medieval idiots, whose opinions are odious, hateful, primitive, ignorant, and close-minded.
Boo fucking hoo. If you actively support a group who is trying to suppress people's civil rights don't expect to get treated with kid gloves. If the shoe fits... as they say. And I don't care if you party with gays or have black friends or whatever other clichés bigots like to throw out when they're in denial of what they're supporting, the fact is, you're supporting homophobia. You're participating in or supporting denying people's civil rights. It's not all puppies and unicorns when you try and suppress people who are just trying to live their lives. Deal with it and quit whining and calling for civility while you're being uncivil.
You're targeting a restaurant chain whose CEO gave a couple million to a couple organizations that support lots of causes, the most expensive of which, by far, is providing ultrasound machines for women's clinics.
Oh, right, so if the company donates to one good thing, that means we should ignore all the bad things it does. Flawless logic right there.
Now onto all the bullshit you were spewing about Dr. King...
Martin Luther King, who didn't support gay marriage and donated to Christian charities that supported families, is going to be rewritten as an evil "hater" who worked to suppress civil rights. He was probably worse than Cathy, and all the black civil rights leaders know it, and many agree with him, publically.
Dr. King didn't support or oppose gay marriage because it was quite simply not part of the national consciousness at that time. You're trying to project modern issues on the past.
If Dr. King was as bitterly opposed to gays and gay marriage as Cathy is, where are all the sermons, articles, and speeches on it? The one time he addressed homosexuality directly in public was in an advice column in Ebony in 1958 where he referred to it as a culturally influenced choice and gave a young boy advice on dealing with his feelings in a polite and non-condemning way. That simply reflected public understanding of homosexuality at the time, and was not an indictment against it.
Why was his special assistant Bayard Rustin not only an openly gay man, but also a outspoken one in the 60s which was virtually unheard of? There was enormous pressure on King to remove him as a distraction, but King refused.
None of these things point to a man who was bitterly opposed to gays. They don't point to much of anything, which is why it's ridiculous to try and speak as if you have some insider knowledge of Dr. King's thoughts.
Some members of the King family would feel right at home in the Westboro Baptist Church, but probably don't think it's doing enough for the anti-gay struggle.
You're so full of shit. Dr. King's daughter Bernice opposes gay marriage on religious grounds, but has never engaged in the kind of hateful rhetoric and funeral protests the WBC has, and has in fact called on LGBT people to join her in fulfilling Dr. King's legacy. And Dr. King's widow
Coretta Scott King strongly supported gay marriage and LGBT rights (as does her other daughter Yolanda) and took a lot of heat for it from black pastors. She said supporting gay rights is perfectly in line with her husband's ideals. So, the wife and the older daughter who actually had more exposure to MLK both said he would support LGBT rights in a modern context. Speculation to be sure, but a hell of a lot better than your baseless anachronistic speculation.
Martin Luther King didn't win his struggle by screaming at whites to see how much he could piss them off, or threaten them, or insult them, or threaten their businesses, because he knew that to succeed he had to win them to his side. He also didn't spend all his political capital to target a restaurant that employed and served blacks exactly the same as the white customers, because he wasn't stupid.
Oh my God, shut up about things you clearly don't know.
Dr. King and the SCLC organized boycotts and lunch counter sit-ins at restaurants in Greensboro, North Carolina, Birmingham, Alabama, and Atlanta, Georgia amongst others, and in the latter he was arrested and sentenced to four months in jail before JFK and RFK intervened on his behalf. So he directly boycotted restaurants that supported intolerance, just like what's happening here, because food is often on the frontlines of these issues.
During the
Birmingham campaign the SCLC specifically targeted white-owned businesses that supported segregation by boycotting them, and their followers would shame any black customers who would patronize downtown businesses. The protests were not all calm and quiet. Passive resistance doesn't mean you have to stay silent, and it doesn't mean --just like the situation today-- that the occasional person can't be provoked into doing something beyond the parameters of what is best for the movement, like responding to hate with hate or violence with violence. That happens occasionally, but it doesn't discredit the whole movement as a result.
And for the eleventh time, Chick-fil-A may be willing to take gay customer's money the same as everyone else's (I guess greed trumps their high and mighty morals), and they may hire gay employees for lowly positions, but their retreats for people wishing to move up in management or to have franchise ownership ban gays. Their preferences for management-level employees and franchise owners are that they be married, which is something gays can't do, and something the company has actively supported legislation to prevent. So gays don't get treated "exactly the same" as everyone else, hence the boycotts and protests.
Now that we've gotten all of that out of the way, can we stick to discussing the actual issue at hand instead of namedropping civil rights leaders of the past, historical bigots, and war strategists and philosophers?
